At the same time, in a secluded training ground tucked away in a corner of Konoha, Uchiha Jin and Uchiha Shisui stood facing one another.
"Big Brother Jin, careful—I'm coming!"
Shisui formed hand seals in a blur. His three-tomoe Sharingan spun to life.
"Phantom Body Flicker!"
In the blink of an eye, identical afterimages peeled away from his body, filling nearly half the training ground. Each one moved with him, breathed with him—alive yet unreal.
This was Shisui's signature technique. The phantoms could attack alongside the original, and even when struck, they would not vanish immediately.
Half real. Half illusion.
Substance within emptiness. Emptiness within substance.
Even Jin, with the Sharingan of his own, found it difficult to distinguish the true body from the false.
It was this very technique that had earned Shisui the name "Shisui of the Body Flicker" on the Kirigakure front lines.
But for Jin, if he couldn't tell which was real—
He simply wouldn't bother.
"Fire Release: Pine Torch!"
He drew the blazing Zanpakutō in his hand—Zanka no Tachi. A massive, tornado-shaped wall of fire roared into existence and swept toward the dozens of Shisuis across the field.
Shisui gave a helpless smile.
"With this scale of ninjutsu… Big Brother Jin, you're practically my natural counter."
He appeared behind Jin in a flash, blade arcing toward the back of his head.
Clang!
Jin reversed his burning sword in one smooth motion, blocking the strike. Flames surged outward along the blade, carried by the shockwave, surging toward Shisui in a suffocating wave of heat.
Shisui's eyes narrowed. He disengaged and retreated, hands already weaving signs.
"Lightning Release: Swift Thunder Arrow!"
A concentrated bolt of lightning shot forth like a piercing arrow.
Jin turned and casually swung.
A massive crescent of flame erupted from his blade, shattering the lightning arrow and continuing its path toward Shisui.
Shisui flipped midair, barely avoiding the blazing arc as he widened the distance again. His smile had turned increasingly wry.
Though he possessed Lightning-nature chakra, it was not his strength. His specialties were speed, Fire Release, genjutsu, and swordsmanship.
But Jin's Body Flicker was even faster than his.
Worse, Jin's large-scale attacks directly countered the Phantom Body Flicker technique, stripping Shisui of his greatest advantage.
As for Fire Release?
Against Jin, it was like throwing sparks at a volcano.
Even genjutsu—where Shisui might hold a slight edge—was difficult to turn into a decisive victory against someone who also wielded the Sharingan.
Swordsmanship…
Better not mention it.
With both sides having agreed in advance not to use the Mangekyō Sharingan, this spar had turned into a one-sided beating.
"Shisui, watch closely. I'm going to test this blade's limit."
Jin bent down and plunged Zanka no Tachi into the ground.
"Blazing Hell."
Shisui's expression shifted.
The temperature of the surrounding air began to rise at an alarming rate. The air shimmered and distorted, as if space itself were warping.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
More than a dozen pillars of fire—each as thick as three men locking arms—burst from beneath the earth and shot into the sky. The daylight dimmed beneath their fury.
Shisui's face changed drastically.
Before he could react, the flaming pillars shifted, converging from every direction, sealing off all avenues of escape.
BOOM!!!
Moments later, the pillars merged into a single colossal inferno more than ten meters wide, blasting upward like a volcanic eruption.
Jin pulled his sword free.
The towering pillar did not immediately dissipate. It continued to burn fiercely, drying the air for kilometers around and sending the temperature skyrocketing.
"Not bad," Jin murmured. "Still far from its limit. At full output, it probably wouldn't be much weaker than Old Man Yamamoto's 'Blazing Hell.'"
Of course, he hadn't truly gone all out.
If he had, much of Konoha might have been reduced to ash.
"Big Brother Jin—were you trying to kill me?!"
Shisui reappeared nearby, looking shaken.
His once flowing hair had become dry and brittle. His clothes had been drenched in sweat, dried, soaked again. He looked visibly thinner, utterly disheveled.
"Move back a little," Jin said calmly. "Before ANBU arrives, there's one more technique I want to test."
He raised the blade horizontally before him.
Then—without hesitation—he grasped the burning edge with his bare hand.
"Zanka no Tachi—East: Rising Sun Blade."
Jin's palm slid slowly along the blade.
Wherever his hand passed, the roaring flames were drawn inward, sealing into the steel itself. The blade's surface darkened, turning black—like charred coal.
Gulp.
Shisui instinctively swallowed and retreated more than a dozen steps.
For reasons he could not explain, the pitch-black blade radiated a suffocating aura of death.
If that blade touched him—even lightly—
He would die.
Without a corpse left behind.
"About one hundred and thirty-six thousand degrees… Good. Very good."
Jin exhaled slowly and dismissed the technique.
Even at full exertion, he could only compress the heat within Zanka no Tachi to around 136,000 degrees Celsius—still far from Yamamoto's terrifying temperatures that reached into the millions.
Millions of degrees…
The Sun's photosphere burned at merely four to six thousand degrees. The corona reached one to two million. The core—fifteen million.
When Yamamoto released his Bankai, it was akin to cloaking himself in a sun's core.
The terror of that power spoke for itself.
Jin was nowhere near that realm yet.
But he was satisfied.
One hundred and thirty-six thousand degrees was not his limit. As his strength grew, so too would that ceiling.
More importantly—
The blade had not cracked.
Not even slightly.
It hadn't even reached its own limit.
He could wield this sword for a very long time.
"Alright, Shisui. ANBU will be here soon. Let's go."
Jin sheathed the blade and casually extinguished the towering inferno in the distance. With a nod, he vanished from the training ground.
And even if ANBU traced everything here back to him—so what?
If they had the courage, they could come to the Uchiha compound and confront him directly.
Since he had already decided to tear off the mask and stand against Konoha's upper brass—
He might as well act like it.
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